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Three snippets
real, fake, and real again.
Writing again.
I’ve been reading a lot more recently. I’m trying to take advantage of my library and also trying to actually accomplish my yearly reading goal. With 6 months left to go I don’t think I’m going to make it, but I’m at least going to keep going for it.
Recently I’ve read Cities I’ve Never Lived in by Sara Majka which was incredibly good and a bit of Bugsy and other Stories by Rafael Frumkin, which I got what they were going for but wasn’t my cup of tea. Majka’s stories are brilliantly written observations about the outcast class amongst us. She writes about those on the outskirts of society: the poor, the abused, the hurt. I don’t think I could write about that (upper middle class upbringing here) but I think, with the right practice, I could write like that: open, honest, vulnerable and raw.
I’m two stories into The Nightmare Box and Other Stories by Cynthia Gómez which is good in a campy sort of way. I couldn’t sleep one morning (Cookie woke me up!) and so got through Manu Larcenet’s graphic novel adaptation of Cormac Mccarthy’s The Road, which was brilliantly illustrated and breathtakingly bleak. I finished Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner which reminded me that novels can be fun to read and write!
I’ve been thinking a lot more about what I want to write and why I want to write. I signed up for a 10 week online writing class because I know that I want to get better at writing but don’t know yet how to do it. Honestly, it makes me incredibly anxious to even think about taking a class. I haven’t done a writing class since college and back then I was so certain of everything I was writing. I wasn’t the best in the class but I had a strong voice and a sense of direction and, more than just understanding the value of writing, I didn’t care about the value of writing, only the way it made me feel.
Now I’ve been beaten down a bit by a string of rejections and an overwhelming sense of hopelessness to what I write. Through therapy I’ve sort of uncovered that writing has been this connective tissue throughout my entire life: a single thing that’s remained consistent about my identity. That’s to say, it feels safe when other things feel more threatening.
Truthfully I care too much about others’ perceptions of me. I want, desperately and shamefully, to be able to write a love story that’s good enough to convince others I’m good enough and that seeps through the writing, even if I don’t want it to. I suppose in a lot of ways I’ve been trying to write love stories that make my exes and current partners proud.
I suppose, I think way too much about men’s opinion of my writing.
No bad words for the coast today
I thought about how silly that sounded. Or perhaps, how gluttonous. To me that’s all one could want: one good thing created. It wasn’t so much the sharing, though I suppose that could be nice. It was the creation of it, or the finishing of it. The finality of a thing, once imagined, now concrete. To hell if someone sees it, I thought, it’s there, it’s alive.
At night we visited a 24 hour coffee shop and sat outside and read or drank. They decorated the ceiling with strings of dusty CDs and fairy lights. Where the dust didn’t linger, the light would catch and send faint rainbow auras dancing around the room. It was hot at night but less hot than the normal Texas summers. When we were finished we walked through the alleyway behind people’s houses, quiet and marveling at the long black sheet of night stretched out above us. He held my hand and we continued that way till we reached his car. I thought about that night often, and how this best reflected his love for me: quiet and unassuming but packed with assumed symbolic meaning.
In the morning we had sex and he made us bad coffee, burned from the old coffee maker that lived on his kitchen counter. I wanted something stronger and cooler. I could never stand the taste of hot coffees. I didn’t like to wait, I wanted to consume things fast and feel their full effects.
He left me in the winter, for the man he had been sleeping with instead of me. All of my friends at the time tried to keep this quiet. They were more his friends than mine so I understood. They tiptoed around the subject, hoping that by saying nothing they would spare my feelings. But I already knew he was with the other man. I had known it for a while, the way you know something to be true but refuse to believe it anyway. It felt sunken: like a pit was opened in my stomach and slowly was consuming all parts of me. I tried, at that time, to fill it up. I wanted the feeling gone so I stuffed a bunch of things inside it hoping that would satisfy its hunger, hoping it would not return. But it kept growing and eventually I had to accept the truth of what it was telling me, even if doing so consumed everything about our love I had previously known.
I kept trying to write our story. I wasn’t sure why. I thought that maybe by writing it out I could make it true. I thought if I understood the form of it, the structure, its function on my life then maybe I could understand his leaving. But there wasn’t anything to understand and there wasn’t any story there. He fell out of love with me, the way most people do with the people they love in their early twenties.
I supposed if I were to write the story a different way it would go like this: we fell in love in the summer, and broke up in the winter.
A complete list of all the short stories i’ve read this year.
The ones I’d recommend are in bold.
Prophecy by kanak kapur
Plaster by David szalay
Between the Shadow and the Soul - Lauren Geoff
Revision Daisy Hildyard
Peking duck - ling ma
Tender by Cherline Bazile
His Finest Moment by Tom Bissell
The Master Mourner Benjamin Ehrlich
Trash Souvankham Thammavongsa
Do You Belong to Anybody? Maya Binyam
Camp Emeline Taryn Bowe -
Treasure Island Alley Da-Li
Moon Esther Yi
This Isn’t the Actual Sea Corinna Vallianatos
The Company of Others Sara Freeman
Bebo Jared Jackson
My Brother William Danica Li
Compromisos Manuel Muñoz
Grand Mal Joanna Pearson
The Mine Nathan Harris
The Muddle Sana Krasikov
Supernova Kosiso Ugwueze
It Is What It Is Azareen Van der Vliet Oloom
The ST. Alwynn Girls at Sea By Sheila Heti
A Visit from the Chief By Samanta Schweblin
My Friend Pinocchio By David Rabe
Five Bridges By Colm Tóibín
Keuka Lake By Joseph O’Neill
How to eat your own heart, Gina Chung
Green Frog, Gina Chung
Rabbit Heart, Gina Chung
After the Party, Gina Chung,
Names for Fireflies, Gina Chung
Mantis, Gina Chung
Presence, Gina Chung
Sound of Water, Gina Chung
Attachment Process, Gina Chung
The Arrow, Gina Chung
Honey and Sun, Gina Chung
You’ll never know how much I loved you, Gina Chung
The fruits of sin, Gina Chung
The love song of the Mexican free-tailed bat, Gina Chung
Reverons dolls Sara Majka
Miniatures Sara Majka
Boy with finch Sara Majka
White heart bar Sara Majka
Saint Andrew’s hotel Sara Majka
Settlers Sara Majka
The museum assistant Sara Majka
Maureen Sara Majka
Nashua Sara Majka
Strangers Sara Majka
Cities I’ve never lived in Sara Majka
Four hills Sara Majka
Travelers Sara Majka
Boston Sara Majka
Lips like sugar Cynthia Gomez
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